“She’s good, but she doesn’t quite have executive presence.”

I’ve heard versions of this sentence in talent discussions for years. It sounds like feedback. It usually isn’t.

Ask a simpler question: what exactly do we mean? Did she struggle to explain a recommendation clearly? Did she become defensive when challenged? Did she avoid a decision because the information was incomplete? Did she find it hard to influence a senior stakeholder who disagreed with her?

Those are things we can observe and discuss. “She doesn’t have executive presence” is an impression. And impressions are shaped by what we are used to seeing.

Familiarity becomes the leadership standard

Every organisation develops an informal picture of what a senior leader sounds like. Direct. Fast in meetings. Quick to speak and quick to challenge. In that picture, the person who takes time to listen and think before answering looks hesitant.

The problem starts when we confuse a style we recognise with a capability we need. I’ve watched people told to be more “visible” when what they were really being asked to do was communicate the way their senior colleagues felt comfortable with.

Leadership roles do demand real capabilities: stronger influence, clearer communication, sound judgement under pressure. The organisation should be able to name them without asking an employee to decode a personality preference.

How an impression becomes evidence

“I wasn’t convinced by her” is clearly an impression. “She needs stronger executive presence” sounds like a diagnosis.

The second travels much further. It enters a talent review, appears in a development plan and eventually shapes a promotion decision. The moment that produced the reaction disappears. The label stays, and it sounds more objective than the reaction behind it.

Ask for the example

When someone is said to lack executive presence, ask what happened in the meeting, what the person did, what you expected instead and which capability was missing. If the evaluator cannot answer, the phrase should not go into a promotion discussion.

Replace the label with behaviours

If we want someone to “command a room”, we should say what that means. Explaining a difficult decision clearly? Holding a position under challenge? Influencing peers without relying on hierarchy? Making a recommendation with incomplete information?

These are different behaviours, and each gives the employee something to work on. The same discipline matters in calibration. If leaders are mostly fast-talking and comfortable interrupting, those traits start to feel like leadership itself, and a person who listens carefully and then makes a clear recommendation gets judged against a style, not the role.

Before we ask anyone to develop more executive presence, we should be able to say what we mean by it. If we cannot, the development issue may not be with the person being assessed.

Link – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/she-needs-more-executive-presence-what-we-actually-sonica-ftilc/